WD, a storage industry leader, today announced the debut of WD Red NAS hard drives, an innovative line of SATA hard drives specifically designed for home and small office NAS (network attached storage) systems with one to five drive bays. Compatibility-tested with top NAS box manufacturers and optimized for power and performance, WD Red hard drives are now shipping in 3.5-inch 1 TB, 2 TB and 3 TB capacities.

The WD Red line features NASware technology, designed to improve reliability and system performance, reduce customer downtime and to simplify the integration process. This new product line addresses the unique environment of NAS and the growing demand for affordable, reliable and compatible storage that reduces customer total cost of ownership. WD Red hard drives also feature 3D Active Balance Plus, an enhanced balance control technology, which significantly improves the overall drive performance and reliability. In an exclusive for WD Red customers, WD is offering free premium 24x7 dedicated support and a three-year limited warranty.

The addition of WD Red expands WD's "Power of Choice" client hard drive solutions. WD recognizes that customers and their applications are diverse and they should be empowered to choose the drives that best suit their specific storage needs. With distinguishable colors, the "Power of Choice" storage solutions are clear and easy to identify: WD Blue (solid performance and reliability for everyday computing), WD Green (cool, quiet, eco-friendly), WD Black (maximum performance for power computing) and WD Red (home and small office NAS). The four colors enable quick selection of the best WD drive for customers' application or usage requirements.

"The network attached entry level storage market is poised to grow at an 86.2 percent 2011-2016 CAGR," according to John Rydning, IDC's research vice president for hard disk drives. "WD's new WD Red hard disk drives offer a unique combination of product features and customer support for users seeking to expand the capacity of their entry-level network attached storage solutions."

"Until now, customers had to choose between using desktop or high-end server drives for their home or small office NAS systems - neither of which were both cost effective for consumer solutions and fully NAS compatible," said Melyssa Banda, senior director of product marketing for WD. "WD saw this challenge as a perfect opportunity to design a better solution so we developed WD Red drives, an optimized product for this rapidly growing segment."

WD Red hard drives integrate seamlessly with WD NAS solutions and are qualified to work with a wide array of WD OEM partners. An updated list of WD Red-qualified products and manufacturers is available on the WD website at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810.

Availability and Pricing
WD Red hard drives are available now at select resellers and distributors. Manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) for the WD Red 1 TB drive (model #: WD10EFRX) is $109.00 USD, the 2 TB drive (model #: WD20EFRX) is $139.00 USD and the 3 TB drive (model #: WD30EFRX) is $189.00 USD. More information about WD Red hard drives including terms of the limited warranty may be found on the company website at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810.

WD Red NAS Hard Drive Launch Partners

WD Branded Products
"The My Book Live family has received strong reception from consumers and the WD Red drive offers attributes ideal for small NAS systems," said Scott Vouri, vice president and general manager of WD's connected home solutions group. "My Book Live customers will benefit from WD Red's NASware features in the future."

Synology Inc.
"Synology is thrilled to be teaming up with WD to offer customers a reliable storage solution featuring WD Red NAS hard drives, which are optimized for consumer NAS systems," said Vic Hsu, CEO of Synology Inc. "The award-winning Synology DiskStation makes it easy for users to build secure private clouds that operate at maximum uptime. By delivering our unique technologies together, Synology and WD will provide users with greater reliability, cooler operation and a higher quality of user experience."

Thecus Tech., Corp.
"The compatibility of Thecus NAS with the new and dynamic WD Red HDDs is excellent news for all," said Florence Shih, general manager of Thecus. "To realize this vision, users can experience firsthand true power and performance. Ultimately, the congruency among WD Red hard drives with Thecus NAS brings great opportunities to the storage industry."

Jizzler said:From a quick glance at the site, looks like a Green (IntelliPower) with TLER.

I wonder if having a ton of different versions of a hard drive increases sales. I don't understand why you can't just have green and black and just throw TLER on all of them. I would imagine producing different drives with different features must cost a pretty penny. If I was going to build a NAS RAID I think I would have just gotten some blues. Sounds like an expensive WD Green, I'm assuming they're 5400 RPM drives too. Is the 1Tb drive a 2 platter drive?

Aquinus said:I wonder if having a ton of different versions of a hard drive increases sales. I don't understand why you can't just have green and black and just throw TLER on all of them. I would imagine producing different drives with different features must cost a pretty penny. If I was going to build a NAS RAID I think I would have just gotten some blues. Sounds like an expensive WD Green, I'm assuming they're 5400 RPM drives too. Is the 1Tb drive a 2 platter drive?

Probably done to make Seagate look out of touch with consumer needs.

WD:
- Easy to use color-coded system
- Four situation-tailored series.

Seagate:
- We have Barracuda, the middle finger of the sea.

Don't know for sure, but since there are 1TB/platter Greens, it might be 1, 2, 3 platters respectively for the Red series. Also, the 1TB model has the highest substained throughput at 150MB/s vs 145MB/s and lower power usage than the other two drives.

Can anyone explain NAS I did a quick check on-line and now I'm really confuse and now i see they have NOS systems also anyway why have colors if NAS is better why not make one with performance/ speed/cool/quit/and Eco-friendly . But maybe that's not good for marketing.$109. is not bad but you can get 1TB for $89 and if not for the flood 1TB would probably be about $75. or less.WD should try to make ssd less expensive isn't that the future for storage. Come to think of it I don't think I seem a WD ssd.

The flood thing is a bs . Should have recovered from Q1 Even companies that are not effected in that region have their price high up , cant blame them people need to make money but i think its been high long enough and they are using it to their advantage which is damaging some peoples wallet . But its a good thing also because ssd seem like a viable choice now for alot of people , but bad on people who just need mass storage .

Elmo said:The flood thing is a bs . Should have recovered from Q1 Even companies that are not effected in that region have their price high up , cant blame them people need to make money but i think its been high long enough and they are using it to their advantage which is damaging some peoples wallet . But its a good thing also because ssd seem like a viable choice now for alot of people , but bad on people who just need mass storage .

Honestly i have to agree with you on this.. i bought a wd black and installed win7 on it i dont see anything great its still slow. Maybe im too used to ssd but yeah i expected it to be better then a wd green its like a 5% improvement.. but i did run a benchmark on it i only find it 100MB r/w

do WD really think that their Desktop Blue series are "solid performance and reliability for everyday computing" you got to be kidding me.

Let's strip away the fancy BS speak for a sec...

GREEN: Slow
BLUE: Unreliable
BLACK: Overpriced
BLACK(RE4): Overpriced

Stop dissing WD already. I have both Seagates and WD drives that run great. I've had no issues with Greens or Blacks, and I've had a single Blue die on me which WD replaced very quickly. I've personally never had a Seagate die either. As far as the RE4, it's a server/mission critical drive, it's supposed to be "enterprise grade" which has half of the reason why it has a 5 year warranty and WD tends to be zippy quick with those RMAs.

If all you're going to say is different ways WD drives are crap, then stop posting because it's not only useless, you're just trolling for a fight. Grow up and stay on topic, this is about WD and their new Red drives for NAS. Not Seagate and not WD's reliability. Also keep in mind that just because you've had a bad experience with WD, doesn't mean other people have. At work all we have are WD drives, two died (out of at least 24,) and they were replaced in one business week from the time they were shipped and they were sent back via 2 day shipping.

Elmo said:Honestly i have to agree with you on this.. i bought a wd black and installed win7 on it i dont see anything great its still slow. Maybe im too used to ssd but yeah i expected it to be better then a wd green its like a 5% improvement.. but i did run a benchmark on it i only find it 100MB r/w

After experiencing SSD, you'd probably need to go from Green to Velociraptor to notice any difference ;)

Aquinus said:Stop dissing WD already. I have both Seagates and WD drives that run great. I've had no issues with Greens or Blacks, and I've had a single Blue die on me which WD replaced very quickly. I've personally never had a Seagate die either. As far as the RE4, it's a server/mission critical drive, it's supposed to be "enterprise grade" which has half of the reason why it has a 5 year warranty and WD tends to be zippy quick with those RMAs.

If all you're going to say is different ways WD drives are crap, then stop posting because it's not only useless, you're just trolling for a fight. Grow up and stay on topic, this is about WD and their new Red drives for NAS. Not Seagate and not WD's reliability. Also keep in mind that just because you've had a bad experience with WD, doesn't mean other people have. At work all we have are WD drives, two died (out of at least 24,) and they were replaced in one business week from the time they were shipped and they were sent back via 2 day shipping.

Go troll somewhere else, please. :shadedshu

Hes not really trolling but honestly in terms of rwp there isnt much difference but warranty and alittle extra speed which honestly i cant really feel but yeah thats coz im used to ssd but yep wd/seagate are great for mass storage and we will always need hard drives because its a cheaper solution then flash memory . Many people say in time ssd will take over hdd but hdd are becoming bigger its estimated by 2014 you will see 10-60tb 3.5inch hdd .But im not to sure about their performance because it uses a new material . Anyway i think mainly hes complaining about the price points im sure youre aware it only has dropped little and has not dropped back to where its suppose to be wd promised to be done i think in q4 last year or q1 this year according to some people i spoke to but now its estimated to be q3 or end of q2 this year this figures can change anytime anyway .But i think this is a load of sham because i spoke to some people in the oem business and even directly to wd because someone inquired from me for supplying 10,000 units of 1tb drives to iran and their response was we have stock. And the manufacturing date was last year and also they were 64m 7200rpm models which u dont really see during that time in shops most of them either show 32m cache 64m 5400 or 16m 7200 . This is what i saw from my country so i cant say if this was the same in the merica.

I have both WD Caviar Black 1TB and Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB drives and by far I like the Samsung drives way better. I never liked Seagate, Hitachi, or Fujitsu drives. I remember when I could get the Samsung drives for $65 off eBay. Even though I have like 8 Samsung drives and 2 WD drives I wish I would have bought more. :-p

Jizzler said:Seagate:
- We have Barracuda, the middle finger of the sea.

I'm not much of a Seagate fan (more issues in the past) but that line is just wonderful. You sir are a blessing on the internet.

As for the topic, it's nice to see SOME innovation of some sort. I just wouldn't touch it whether I was making a NAS box or not because of the cost. I'd go higher quality or just grab larger storage for that price.

According to Backblaze, a cloud storage company, Hitachi drives have been the most reliable. I tend to believe them especially after my experiences at work with Seagate and WD drives. I wish they had something to say about Samsung drives. I guess it doesn't really matter anymore since Samsung and Hitachi no longer make HDDs... If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.